One day down the coast: the video!

Please excuse my tardiness, here's the video of the flight we took last July from Bankstown to Merimbula, Moruya, Gabo Island and back. I took this video on the first leg while Chris was flying, so it really only covers the Bankstown to Merimbula leg. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Because I'm lazy I didn't put any explanation in as to what is what, so I'll use a time-honoured trick favoured by teachers all around the world: I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader. See if you can spot the aerodromes of Camden, Moruya, Nowra but also Mount Dromedary and all the little coastal towns. All the scenes are in chronological order, that should help!

All downhill from here: Armidale to Sydney

On the fourth and final leg of our round trip from Sydney to Brisbane I was flying and didn't take any pictures. Thanks to Chris and Dennis then for the photos and especially for the one right below, which deserves some explaining.

There is only one taxiway connecting the apron to the runway at Armidale. We had just finished our run-ups on the apron when a QuantasLink Q400 turboprop called inbound on the CTAF frequency. Rather than wait on the apron and taxi our way around him, always a risky affair, we waited at the holding point for him to land.

After he landed we entered the runway and backtracked to the threshold of runway 05, while the Q400 was backtracking the runway from the other end in the direction of the taxiway. We made all the required radio calls and then some so at all time the crew of the Q400 knew what we were doing. The photo was taken as we were already lined up for departure and holding and the Q400 was still backtracking.

From Armidale we followed the New England Highway to Tamworth. Tamworth tower was very helpful in helping us identify the visual navigation landmarks to transit their airspace. Once back in Class G airspace we kept following the Hunter valley past Willow Tree, Murrubundi, Scone, Muswellbrook, Lake Liddell, Singleton, Cessnock, Maitland and reached the coast again at Lake Macquarie.

From there we tracked for Brooklyn Bridge for the VFR lane southbound, reported inbound at Prospect and landed on 11C at Bankstown. Total time 10.4 hours, 4.8 hours northbound and 5.6 southbound. The longer return leg of course a result of our little scenic flight around Brisbane.

The photo above really speaks for itself. This was a tiring trip that left a smile on my face for the whole week after. Intense and demanding because of the failure of the GPS unit right at the start, and also a lot of fun thanks to great company and a good mix of familiar, formerly familiar and unknown places.

Keeping Australia on the left

Remember how I mentioned in a previous post a plan to fly from Sydney to Brisbane and back over Queen's Birthday week-end, and also remarked on how things in aviation have a habit of not going according to plan? Both prophecies came to pass.

The Arrow we had booked became unserviceable the day before our planned departure. The trim cable had snapped, and a replacement part wouldn't be available before the next Tuesday. Which left us without an airplane.

Ed (let him win the next AOPA Sweepstakes, his weight & balance always come 5kg under MTWO and his weather forecasts always read CAVOK), who had planned to fly with us part of the way in another airplane displayed the most amazing generosity and let us have the Archer VH-SFR for two days. Our three-day trip was shortened to two days, but we had an airplane!

With three blokes onboard, a little bit of baggage and full tanks we were about 5 kilos under maximum take-off weight when our wheels left runway 29R shortly before 9AM.

A few minutes into the flight I could see Chris repeatedly press the CLR button on the Garmin 430. Whatever the level of details selected, the moving map would only show the coastline and major roads, but no airspace at all. We restarted the unit and a message came up saying it couldn't read the Jeppesen memory card. We swapped memory slots, same story. The GPS could give us our position, track and ground speed, but didn't know any airport, waypoint or airspace. Great.

So this all turned into a week-end of visual navigation supplemented by the use of NDBs and VORs. This gave us the measure of all the bad habits we had developed relying on the GPS, so in the end I would say these 10.4 hours of hard work were also a great educational experience. It felt like a long PPL navigation exercise.

We enlisted all the help we could find, which meant following roads, applying large buffers to make sure we were not violating controlled airspace, and requesting flight following from ATC.

They say an image is worth a thousand words, so a video is probably worth one million words.

I had recently purchased a suction camera mount and was eager to try it. The good news is, it works great and provides a very solid seal with the window. The inevitable problem though is that the vibrations of the airplane reach the camera, much more so than when the camera is handheld or held on top of the soft padding on the dashboard, such as when filming a landing.

Despite having a built-in stabilisation feature, the footage captured by the camera was so shaky as to be absolutely unusable. Moving the suction pad to the bottom corner of the window, or leaving my hand on the camera while filming removed some of the shake, but not enough.

Fortunately Vegas Movie Studio, now comes with a very powerful image stabilisation feature that removed nearly all the shake. On the downside, the wing now seems to move in weird ways in front of a smooth landscape, while previously the landscape was shaking in all directions while the wing was reasonably stationary. I guess you can't have it both ways.

We flew via Patonga, Nobbys Head, followed the coastal VFR lane at 500ft around Newcastle as we had done once before, then continued on to Old Bar, Camden Haven, Port Macquarie, Kempsey and Macksville before landing at Coffs Harbour. I could have added overlays for identifying those places on the video, but I felt lazy, so this is left as an exercise for the reader.

We flew through some light showers of rain north of Newcastle, then the weather became progressively better, allowing us to climb up to 5500ft before descending to Coffs where Chris landed VH-SFR on runway 29 in a stiff crosswind.

Even though the GPS had packed in, navigation wasn't too much of an issue since it consisted in keeping the ocean to our right and the big landmass called Australia to our left. We called Coffs Tower inbound at Macksville and were given a clearance over land while another traffic was tracking in the opposite direction over water. The wind was favouring runway 21, but this would have given us a very long taxi to the AVGAS fuel pump, so we decided to go for the much shorter runway 28 instead.

This photo was taken when flying a left base leg for 28, which looks very much like a downwind leg for 21. Runway 28 comes into view quite late in the approach because of a slight rise in the terrain to the south of it. To add to the confusion, taxiway E3-E5 is the old runway 19, just without runway markings.

We landed, attended to the necessary biological functions, had a little look around in search of the refueller, found him in his little cubby house of an office, refuelled the aircraft and had a bite to eat. We swapped seats for the second leg: I took the left seat for the leg to Brisbane, with Dennis was in the back and Chris in the front right seat as radio man and navigator. All the details in the next episode.

Thanks everyone for your kind donations after I posted about my participation in the Oxfam Trailwalker fundraiser! The readers of this blog have already contributed $100, congratulations! More information on our team page here.

Changes to Australian airspace on June 3rd

On June 3rd, a number of changes to Australian airspace classification as well as operations at non-towered aerodromes will come into effect. Whatever one may think of the changes themselves, the communication campaign run by CASA was quite impressive and, I like to believe, effective.

I read the briefing package sent to me by CASA, I attended the workshop at Bankstown and I used the online training package. I even listened to Peter Gibson, corporate communication manager at CASA, explain the changes on the always excellent Plane Crazy Down Under podcast. And I noticed the big flashing sign at the main entrance of Bankstown airport on my way to the pilot shop.

So, what are these changes about? In short, GAAP aerodromes will become Class D aerodromes, but not the Class D as we know it, a new kind of Class D that's modelled on the FAA Class D, not the ICAO Class D. This despite the fact that one of the stated goals of the changes was stronger ICAO compliance. Go figure. And airports already in Class D will of course switch to the new Class D.

So we'll end up with three types of aerodromes instead of the current four: Class C where separation is provided by ATC through radar identification, Class D where separation is provided by ATC in a purely procedural manner, and non-towered aerodromes in Class G where pilots provide their own separation using the good old see and avoid principle.

Except that see and avoid becomes alerted see and avoid since the carriage and use of a radio at all certified, registered and military aerodromes becomes compulsory on June 3rd.

In former GAAP aerodromes, taxi clearances will now be required, but only for taxiing in the so-called maneuvering area, which contains the taxiways in direct proximity to the runways and the run-up bays. No need for a clearance to move an aircraft from one end of the apron to the other for refuelling for example.

Going from GAAP to the new Class D, VMC criteria for vertical cloud clearance are increased from clear of cloud to at least 500ft below clouds and 1000ft above. This may have major consequences for circuit operations since it is not uncommon to have good visibility with ceilings below 1500ft. Will ATC instruct pilots to fly circuits at 800ft if the cloud base is at 1300ft? Or not issue clearances for circuits at all and only allow VFR pilots to arrive or leave the control zone under Special VFR? The CASA and Airservices Australia representatives at the workshop made it clear that they will be monitoring the impact of the changes closely and may issue amendments or fine-tune local procedures at certain aerodromes using NOTAMs.

The main changes at non-towered aerodromes concern circuit entry and altitude. We are now allowed, although this is not recommended, to join the circuit on base. The larger changes are about circuit altitudes: GA aircraft remain at 1000ft AGL, but ultralight with a cruise speed under 55 knots need to fly 500ft circuits, while faster airplanes, with cruise speeds above 150kt , typically turboprops such as the SAAB 340, will be flying 1500ft circuits.

I'm curious to see how this will work out in practice. I mean, whichever altitude they fly a circuit at, all aircraft need to get down to ground level eventually. Will we be safer with different types of aircraft at different speeds and different altitudes, but with the added risk of descending or climbing through someone else's circuit altitude? At least with everybody at the same altitude faster aircraft could safely overtake slower ones.

One side-effect of this rule is that overfly altitude will mechanically move from 1500ft AGL up to 2000ft AGL if turboprops may be around. Spotting the windsock suddenly became a lot harder. There is an interesting bit of information found in the CAAP 166-1(0) which states that aerodromes with runways lengths below 1400m are unlikely to receive turboprop traffic, hence overfly can take place as in the past at 1500ft.

I realise I haven't been blogging too much recently, mostly because I didn't do too much flying, and the flying I did, although extremely enjoyable, was not terribly blogworthy. But that's all going to change soon with a planned endorsement to fly the glass cockpit DA40 that the club just put online, and a very exciting trip to Brisbane in Piper Arrow VH-SFJ planned for Queen's Birthday week-end with a few other Schofields Flying Club pilots.

Which will give us plenty of opportunities to try out the new Class D procedures at Bankstown, Coffs Harbour, Archerfield and Sunshine Coast. And hopefully also visit a few non-towered aerodromes on the way. More blogging to come, more photos and hopefully a few new videos thanks a set of camera mounts I offered myself as a birthday gift. Stay tuned!

A fellow flying blogger visits Sydney

Without any doubt, the highlight of writing an aviation blog is meeting in real life pilots I first got in touch with through the blog. This is how I had a coffee at Frankfurt airport with Vincent in 2008, and how I went flying with Chris in 2009. 2010 promises to be a bumper year in that respect, something I am really looking forward to.

Early January I had the pleasure of playing host for one day to Michael and his lovely wife who had the very inspired idea of leaving the Michigan winter behind and spent a few weeks in Australia and New Zealand over the holiday season. Michael is the blogger behind Cleared for the Option and flies out of Willow Run airport (KYIP), near Detroit and is currently working on his instrument rating.

The three of us went for a local flight around Sydney on a Sunday morning, leaving the circuit for 11L at Bankstown on crosswind in the Archer VH-SFA.

We flew the GA lane northbound across Sydney's northern suburbs and turned southbound around Palm Beach.

I started descending to 1500ft over the water. Approaching Long Reef, we experienced some radio problems when requesting a clearance for the Harbour Scenic One procedure: the transmission was perfect one moment, chopped and hardly audible the next. I tried switching radios, still the same. I advised ATC I would do orbits outside of controlled airspace and contact them again when the problem is fixed.

Michael suggested that since I was low and doing orbits, my wing may be blocking the signal intermittently. That made a lot of sense, so I climbed and flew straight for a moment and the problem fixed itself. Thanks Michael!

Tracking towards the Harbour Bridge our traffic was a helicopter towing a massive red banner over Manly Beach. He was not going terribly fast so we overtook him on the right hand side.

This was a banner ad for WeightWatchers. I find it kind of cruel to fly a weight loss ad over the beach on a Sunday afternoon, it's really preying on beachgoers' insecurities, which I guess makes for effective advertisement.

We did a couple of orbits over the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House which offered great views of Sydney CBD. Did I already mention that The Matrix was shot here?

After that we tracked south along the coast on the Victor One route. Clouds were starting to build up, time to head back to Bankstown!

Below is Stanwell Park, not too far from where Laurence Hargrave flew his box kites which inspired many of the early pioneers of heavier-than-air flight, including the Wright brothers. Today hand gliders launch from there, the launch pad can be seen on the right-hand side of the carpark.

We flew back to Bankstown via Appin, followed the M5, called inbound at 2RN and joined final for runway 11R at Warwick Farm. All the details in the video below, and as you can see I had a lot of fun playing with Youtube's annotations feature!

Before saying goodbye we exchanged out-of-date aviation charts as we had agreed beforehand. When Michael opened the Detroit sectional chart to show me his local airspace, I couldn't believe the density of aerodromes. The scale of the chart is the same as our VNC in Australia, but there's many, many more airports. Granted, the population density of the US is eleven times that of Australia, but that's still very impressive. Michael also gave me some approach plates for his home airport of Willow Run, my first time holding approach plates in my hands actually since I do not have, nor am I training for, an instrument rating (yet).

It was great meeting Michael and his lovely wife, we had a great time flying around Sydney and exchanging pilot stories. Now I only need to find a valid reason to pay Michael a visit in Detroit and go for a local flight with him out of Willow Run. And I'm afraid setting a new record with a $2,000+ trans-Pacific hamburger run is not a valid reason.

Update: Michael posted his write-up of our flight with some extra photos, make sure to visit his blog! Thanks again Michael for getting in touch with me in the first place, this was awesome!

Saturday morning flight to Camden

I realised a few days ago that I had to become current again if I wanted to fly with passengers to Wollongong next week-end for the Wings over Illawarra airshow. Three take-offs and landings within the last 90 days are required for carrying passengers, and I only had one in my logbook.

The weatherman promised all Sydneysiders that Saturday would end a long string of IFR-only week-ends, so I booked Warrior VH-SFM for a few hours in the early morning. Time to shake the rust off with a flight to Camden, only 17 nautical miles south-west of Bankstown. The weather didn't disappoint.

Of course the world and his wife had also come to the conclusion that this was a perfect day to resume VFR flying in the Sydney area. All five spots in the run-up area for 29R at Bankstown were taken, so I did my pre take-off checks and engine run-up on the taxiway. I then joined the line for the holding point, making sure to apply the park brake so that my Piper would not creep forward and chew on the tail of the Cessna in front of me.

It may have been smarter to go straight for runway 29C rather than wait for everyone else on runway left. Something to keep in mind for next time. This is a very similar dilemma to that of choosing a check-out lane at the supermarket. The other lane always go faster.

I eventually took off on 29R and flew around the training area, identifying landmarks such as the pipeline south of the Penrith R536 restricted area and Warragamba Dam. With all the rain we received in the last weeks the area was very green. I called inbound at Mayfield and advertised myself as unfamiliar with Camden. The controller gave me an upwind join for 06 rather than a base join and I made a decent (for a solo flight) full-stop landing despite flaring too high. This was my first time landing at Camden in daylight, all the previous times had been at night.

Camden is a great GA airport with more interesting aircraft types than are usually seen around Bankstown. I mentioned this airport already as a possible place for me to do a tailwheel endorsement later this year. Grass trips have magical powers when it comes to attracting vintage aircraft such as this Tiger Moth above or Curtis Aviation's T-6G Texan below.

After a little look around I departed Camden on downwind for 06 at the circuit altitude of 1300ft. On late downwind the controller gave me a traffic, a Cessna in my 2 o'clock, on descent and about to join base. By the time I found him he was right in front of me and quickly disappeared in the bottom left corner of my windscreen.

I would not call it too close for comfort, but I would have appreciated if the controller had kept him at 1800ft for an upwind join rather than descend him in front of me, even if that meant an extra circuit for the Cessna. That being said, separation is the responsibility of the pilot in a GAAP control zone, and I probably could have anticipated the traffic by listening more carefully for the inbound aircraft who most likely was inbound from Mayfield. Lesson learnt.

I followed the ranges to Warragamba Dam then kept the pipeline on my left all the way to Prospect Reservoir. An aircraft was performing aerobatics near an unnamed airfield south of Penrith so I gave it a wide berth. A Cessna and an Extra reported inbound at Prospect before me and we all joined downwind for 29R. I flared too high on that one too and all the credit for the decent landing goes to the oleo suspension of the Warrior.


After crossing the holding point I stopped for a few seconds to perform my after landing actions and checks (landing lights and strobes off, transponder on standby, flaps up, fuel pump off, switch frequency to ground) and started taxiing back to the clubhouse. That's when the ground controller called me asking me to next time please avoid stopping right after vacating the runway since I prevented the aircraft behind me from vacating. Point taken, I won't do it again.

On the fifth day of Christmas...

A few fellow aviation bloggers and I have decided to hang our Christmas stockings to the same virtual fireplace and take turns at blogging about what we wish for Christmas. This ranges so far from a Cirrus SR-22 to Monika Petrillo's FlyAbout DVD, aviation coasters and one very impressive pilot watch.

For Christmas, I would like a Portable Collision Avoidance System, such as Zaon's PCAS MRX. This system is just as portable as a hand-held GPS unit and provides alerts on nearby traffic as long as other traffic is transponder-equipped and there is an interrogating system nearby, such as a secondary radar or an airliner overhead.

Priced at USD 449 on skygeek.com, this is a very good investment for anyone who has come too close for comfort with another aircraft and wish he had identified the threat before it turned into a real danger. I'm thinking for example of entry points to busy GA airports such as the only two compulsory entry points for Sydney's Bankstown airport. Max Trescott also identified a number of similar local hotspots such as navaids and prominent geographic features.

Blogger pilotbrad ordered the Zaon MRX, unpacked it, started using it and already reported one instance of the system picking up an aircraft Brad and his instructor would have missed otherwise.

A portable system is ideal for pilots who do not always fly the same aircraft such as private pilots who hire aircraft from flying clubs and flight instructors who may instruct in a dozen different aircraft in the course of one week. A large flying school in the US just decided to buy the Zaon product for all their flight instructors rather than equip the airplanes.

For the price of two or three hours of aircraft hire, a PCAS system may well represent the best investment for improving in-flight safety. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Santa always takes his PCAS with him whichever sledge he's flying, even though NORAD is tracking him.

Up the coast and down the worm: a daytrip to Taree

Chris over at The Online Temple of Chris Parkes (best name ever for a personal blog if your name happens to be Chris Parkes) posted about a flight we did together from Bankstown to Taree and back. This was a great flight, and the first flight where I shared cockpit duties with a fellow pilot who was not an instructor, so this was a big first for me.

Flying from Bankstown to Taree involves crossing the restricted airspace around and above Williamtown RAAF base. Since this was the week-end most of the restricted airspace was de-activated, but we followed the prescribed VFR route anyway, both because it is good training and offers fantastic views: who would say no to following the coastline at 500ft on a CAVOK day?

There's plenty more photos and trip details in Chris's post so I won't double-up here. Let me just say that the flight up the coast was truly spectacular. Finding Taree airport wasn't too hard, it's right next to the town and not too far from where the Pacific Highway crosses the Manning River. A Rex Saab 340 was waiting for us to vacate the runway before they could backtrack and take-off since there is no taxiway alongside the runway at Taree.

We parked on the grass right in front of the Manning River Aero Club and went inside to say hello and ended up having a bit of a yarn with the local flight instructor. It's a great club-house with a very homely feel to it, really the kind of club I would love to fly with if it wasn't so bloody far away from the big city. Their fleet is very typical of a small club: one Cessna 152 and one Piper Archer.

The friendly character of the club house is confirmed by the central location of the combined kitchen and bar bench right in the middle of the clubhouse. The whole setup was probably designed long before CASA came up with the idea of the AOD Initiative.

Across the street is the Taree Airport Hotel. For my non-Australian readers, this is not a hotel, this is a pub. Many pubs in Australia are called hotels, because there used to be a time when pubs, especially in rural areas, performed the role now played by motels and budget hotel chains. Some pubs still today provide accommodation. They're few and far between though, but definitely worth it, especially in remote areas. Articles written by Shelley Ross in Australian Flying often feature great outback locations, with a dirt strip in the back paddock as a bonus.

Keeping with the aviation theme, the board used by the Airport Hotel Bottle Shop (that's a liquor store for my American readers) is a taildragger of sorts, with a long fuselage and short stubby wings. Must require a lot of rudder to enter a turn! I'm not quite sure it would take-off anyway, due to the position of the center of lift ahead of the main wheels.

I do not know what type of watering hole this is, but I can give you one piece of factual evidence: as I walked back to the airport I came across a pair of female undies in the ditch across the road. I doubt the action that lead to the loss of the garment originated from the airport.

We left and tracked west down the valley and then turned south in the direction of Gloucester, still following the train tracks. I tried to get flight following but we were too low and the controller didn't have us on radar, we would have needed to be at least 5000ft AMSL in this area to appear on his scope. So we were literally flying under the radar.

Following the tracks was easy because there was one of us flying the airplane and the other one reading the map. With an upper limit of 1000ft AMSL and hills on both side I wouldn't want to spend too much time reading the map if I was on my own. There's one section right before Dungog where the track disappears into a short tunnel but that wasn't enough to throw us off. We didn't overfly Dungog to avoid breaking the 1000ft over populated areas rule.

Being in the left seat and not in direct control of navigating or radio communication is a bit unsettling at first but I quickly adjusted to it. Of the two legs I enjoyed the second one most, i.e. the one where I was in the right seat navigating and taking care of the radios and GPS. That was the same for Chris who said he too preferred the right seat.

In my opinion the satisfaction comes from the fact that not having to hand-fly the airplane frees up time and brain space for managing the flight in a thorough manner. Flying a technically advanced aircraft with an autopilot coupled to a smart navigation system must feel the same.

Except you cannot exchange flying tales with a glass cockpit, so I'll choose Chris over George the Autopilot any day!

Moisture in the air and water in the tanks

The date was sometime in July, and the intended destination was Taree, NSW, with the idea of getting back into cross-country flying. There's only so much pottering around the Sydney basin one can do, as beautiful as it is, and the glimpse of the area I got while competing above Warnervale enticed me to come back.

At first it looked as if I had been very lucky with picking Saturday morning for flying, since this was the only day in the week with no rain and even a bit of sunshine. Even the aviation weather forecast on the day before looked hopeful.

I arrived at the club and checked the weather. The trip to Taree was not going to work. Most of the aerodromes along the way had forecasted or reported conditions with either low clouds, fog, showers of rain or a combination thereof. With full tanks I would be able to fly to Taree and fly back to Bankstown without refueling if I couldn't land. But rain was coming in from the south-west later in the afternoon, reaching Sydney around 4PM which would result in visibility of 4000m, below VFR minimums. I could visualise the holes in the Swiss cheese slowly lining up. A Plan B was needed.

I decided instead to fly an abbreviated version of the planned flight and go to Cessnock via Warnervale and Newcastle. This way I could still fly part of the planned flight, and would be back early enough to avoid the rain. Flight planning took a little while, the flight notification was eventually submitted and I was on my way to preflight the aircraft.

Yes, in the picture above there is actually water at the bottom of the fuel tester. Moisture in the air and cold temperatures overnight result in water condensing inside the half-empty fuel tanks. The phenomenon is more common in low-wing aircraft where the wings are closer to the ground and therefore exposed to lower temperatures at night. This is no big deal at all, just a reminder to always perform a thorough pre-flight. Which I did.

From the ground I could see rather low clouds in the GA lane, but I decided to go anyway since there was enough space between the low clouds to turn back to the airport or go to the training area should the lane northbound be obscured by clouds. Taking off in those conditions pushed me a little bit outside of my comfort zone, but not to the point where I felt unsafe.

I took off on 29R, maintained 1000ft until well outside the control zone and climbed to 2000ft. Contrary to what the area forecast had said, there were still plenty of low clouds still firmly seated in the valleys to the west, over the Berowra area. And it didn't look like they planned on dissipating anytime soon.

After Patonga I adjusted my heading slightly toward Warnervale at 3500ft, with still lots of clouds in the Kariong area. I found Warnervale aerodrome, which is not really a challenge given its prominent location between the Pacific Highway and Tuggerah Lake. One lonely Cessna 152 was doing circuits at Warnervale. I made a call on the CTAF frequency advising everyone I was overflying the aerodrome and kept tracking north.

I flew over Vales Point power station and then over Lake Macquarie. This is Eraring Power Station at the back of the picture above. I was maintaining 3500ft, so you can tell from the photo that there was one point where the weather forecast was spot on: cumulus and stratocumulus clouds with a base of 3000ft.

Swansea was easy to identify thanks to the breakwaters and the bridge. The Aeropelican aerodrome appeared immediately after. How much nicer is it to see it from the bumpy and noisy comfort of a small airplane rather than from the relative comfort of an airliner?

Nobbys Heads was also very easy to find, thanks to the very distinctive shape of the coastline and the lighthouse. If the Williamtown military control zone had been active I would have been in trouble by then, but the ATIS had told me that it was de-active, as is generally the case on week-ends, so all was good.

My aircraft on the day, the Piper Archer VH-SFA, was fitted with a carburettor temperature gauge, so I applied carby heat from time to time to keep the needle away from the yellow zone since there was plenty of moisture in the air. I think I would have done that anyway, but the gauge acted as a useful reminder that high humidity and winter temperatures increase the risk of carburettor icing.

At Nobbys Head I turned left and flew west toward Cessnock. I passed Mount Sugarloaf and its twin masts.

The town in front of me was Kurri Kurri, but where had Cessnock airport gone? Answer: it was hiding under the blankies! The cloud blanket that is. I was at 2500ft by then and the clouds looked much lower than that, so instead of going scud running to find an airport I had never been to before, I decided to head south to Warnervale, which I had planned to overfly anyway on my way back from Cessnock. This way, I would get back onto my planned flight.

I couldn't take a direct heading to Warnervale since this would have taken me over high terrain with little space left between the fluffy stuff in the air and the hard stuff on the ground, so I headed for a gap in the hills.

I flew past the Cooranbong aerodrome, which is no longer used as one can tell from the big white crosses at the threshold of each runway. It's sad because it looks like a very nice airport, with a long sealed runway. Apparently, Avondale College used to run an aviation degree out of here up until 2006.

I overflew Warnervale. The same Cessna with the same pilot was still doing circuits. I tuned the Calga NDB and tried my best to track to the aid. Not a big success, but then again I was keeping my eyes out and not flying on instruments. And I have a proof of that: I could spot Mardi Reservoir, and later Somersby aerodrome.

After Calga I tracked to Brookly Bridge, the entry point for the GA lane southbound. This is the highway bridge right above the cowling in the photo below, not the one more to the east which is only for trains, and also dangerously close to the GA lane northbound.

This was my first time flying the GA lane southbound and everything went absolutely according to plan. I had watched the CASA DVD on flying around Sydney a couple of times the day before, which really helped. I also had the GPS on, just to make double sure I would not infringe on Richmond Military CTR. I even slowed down a little to give me more time for thinking and finding the landmarks.

I found the Berowra strobe exactly where I was expecting it, then identified the power substation, the rifle range to my left and Dural Tanks with the strobe on top. I managed to maintain 2500ft all the way down the lane, with some minor zigzagging around clouds required. The picture above says it all.

I picked up the Bankstown ATIS and started a descent in order to be at 1500ft at Prospect Reservoir. I was about to make my inbound call to Bankstown Tower when a pilot came onto the frequency. One could tell immediately from his voice that he was very distressed. But that's a story I'll tell in the next post. I landed on 29R, taxied back to the club house, shut down, wrote down the numbers and tidied up the airplane.

All in all a nice flight even though it didn't go according to plan, and not even according to the revised plan. This was clearly a case of experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.

I was happy with my decision making throughout the flight though. At every point in the flight I had a Plan B and even a Plan C, so I like to think this was a safe flight. The thorough flight preparation definitely paid off. Flying in marginal weather was a good experience too. Now with the summer ahead of us, I'm looking forward to really making it to Taree sometime soon.

Alone in the dark

I was driving to the airport from work for my first night solo when rain started to fall. Great. Just what I needed, a wet runway and the likelihood of reduced visibility in the circuit. Or even no night solo at all if Dan estimated it was not safe enough for me to go.

I preflighted the airplane under the rain. It took me a while to understand that the navigation lights on that airplane are activated by the panel lights switch, as opposed to having a dedicated switch like on other airplanes. The landing light had been fixed since the first time I flew the airplane, so I wouldn't have to rely on the wing-mounted light this time. Good. The ground was soaked with water which made it difficult to check the flap hinges or the fuel drains without covering myself in mud.

I went out for three circuits with Dan, the Deputy Chief Flying Instructor, so that he could check that I actually knew what I was doing before signing me out for solo at night. We taxied to 11C, did two normal circuits, one go-around, one normal circuit with no landing light and one full-stop behind a rescue helicopter.

On my first circuit I ended up too high on final so I decided to perform a sideslip to loose altitude without gaining airspeed. "Do you know you're sideslipping?" asked Dan. Yes I answered. I guess I should have verbalised the manoeuvre instead of letting him believe I had developed a habit of unwittingly flying with crossed controls.

Dan explained that sideslips should be avoided at night since judging height is harder than in daytime. Better work on fixing the problem of being high on final rather than on the unsafe solution required to recapture the correct descent profile. 1500 rpm when turning base is the magical number said Dan if I want to be at 500 feet when turning final. Of course this all assumes I fly circuits of correct dimensions, i.e. one minute for each of the last two legs.

Dan said he was happy with me going solo for another hour of circuits. He added that if the airplane started to skid on the wet runway on landing I should apply full power and take-off immediately rather than trying to control the airplane on the ground.

Dan jumped out of the airplane and I taxied back to the run-up bay and then to 11C for ten more circuits. VH-SFA and VH-SFR were the other two aircraft in the circuit, with Dan in one and Ben in the other. So I had two pairs of instructor eyes looking after me. Nice of them to not leave me alone in the dark.

The clouds had cleared a bit by now, and the full moon had risen to the east. On downwind the full moon lit up the entire panel. Having only one person on board allows the 160 hp Warrior to climb and accelerate a lot better. At some point after a touch-and-go I even found myself catching up with a 152 in front so requested and obtained an extended upwind leg for spacing.

The rule when night flying though is to spend the entire upwind leg on instruments and not look outside below 500ft, when ready to turn crosswind. I find that difficult with an aircraft in front of me in the circuit, both because the anti-collision light of the preceding aircraft appear in my peripheral field of vision, right above the dashboard, and also because I want to positively maintain separation, not just rely on ATC spacing aircraft correctly in the circuit. As a matter of fact, in GAAP control zones ATC do not provide separation, the responsibility for avoiding collisions rests entirely with the pilots.

On one circuit I learned a valuable lesson. I had just turned final and the preceding aircraft was on short final. It looked like it was too much to the right so I kept an eye on him to see how he was landing. This distracted me from my scan, and when I next looked at the PAPI lights I saw 4 red lights! I got a bit scared since I didn't how far below the glideslope I was and in addition I remembered there's a line of tall trees in the area. More power, back up to the glideslope.

I landed a few minutes before the tower closed and taxied back to the club house. We spent a bit of time going through all the paperwork required and putting a new stamp in my logbook that says I am competent to fly solo at night in PA28 aircraft at night according to the requirements of CAR 5.01A.

It was starting to get a bit late and I was hungry so I said thank you and good bye to Dan and Ben and walked back to my car. I had not turned round the corner of the airport when rain started to fall again. I made a special mental note that I was lucky with weather this time, so that I won't get too upset next time weather Karma does not go my way.

More night circuits and a bit of daylight

My last session of night circuits was much, much better than the previous one. Ben said he is now ready to send me solo at night, which will happen as soon as my schedule and the weather conditions agree. So all the beating myself up and rehearsing circuit procedures in my head and on paper paid off.

This time I was prepared. I had eaten a triple cheeseburger on the way to Bankstown. For some reason whenever I go flying I feel excused for eating junk food. I was hydrated but not too much. I had my own torchlight and the pre-flight visit didn't reveal any nasty surprise. Earlier in the day the wind was blowing at 15 knots gusting to 25, but as night fell so did the wind, down to a more manageable 8 knots. There was a catch though: the forecast called for moderate to severe turbulence below 5000ft, which combined with the crosswind made for a few challenging final legs.

The aircraft that night was VH-SFK, still a Warrior but much better equipped than IJK which I flew the time before. As you can see on the photo above, the row of switches actually lights up on this aircraft. The Garmin 430 automatically dims the display at night. Ben showed me the settings page where the display brightness can be adjusted. If you look back at the photos taken on my very first night flight, you can tell the GPS display was still on full bright. The lights of the annunciator panel can also be dimmed.

I flashed the landing light three times as a warning sign for anyone around to stay clear of the aircraft and started the engine after a bit of priming. We taxied for left-hand circuits on 29C. As we approached the main apron two Aero Commander crossed in front of us, following a larger Metroliner, like ducklings lined up behind their mother.

For some unknown reason, we were the only training aircraft in the circuit that evening, in contrast with the time before when we had to wait twenty minutes in the run-up bay before someone left the circuit and the controller allowed us to join the merry-go-round. Maybe the forecasted turbulence discouraged other pilots. Maybe we were just lucky. Maybe there was something good on TV for a change.

We started with two normal circuits to get me back in the saddle. Preparation paid off, I didn't forget anything and the shape of the circuits was acceptable this time. Not great, but acceptable. There was a crosswind from the right on final which I managed to handle reasonably well, even though we drifted a bit far from the centreline on a couple of occasions. I should have put more ailerons in after removing the crab. Landings were a lot harder than the previous time, but my excuse is that that's what one wants with crosswind landings: a long float means the possibility of drifting downwind of the centreline, and flying with crossed control in the flare means more drag.

The crosswind was blowing our downwind leg a bit too far away from the runway, and the moving map on the GPS showed us a bit too close to the edge of the control zone for comfort. The control zone at Bankstown is more or less a circle with a radius of 3 nautical miles, so the correct analogy for circuits there would be a goldfish in his bowl. Ben suggested I do not fly a straight crosswind leg, but rather fly a climbing turn from upwind to downwind, which definitely helped bring us closer to the runway.

Then came lighting failures. Ben turned all the interior lights off. I took my torchlight which I had kept handy, turned it on and stuck it to the side of my headset, right above the earcup gel. It works fantastically well, and the red glow from the torchlight illuminated the whole panel. The added bonus of sticking the torchlight under the headset of course is that the light follows where the pilot is looking.

We did four or five circuits like that. The torchlight didn't move. Ben asked the tower controller to shine at us the green light that would indicate we are cleared to land in the event of a radio failure. On the next circuit the controller showed us the red light for a so-called "tower-initiated go-around". I didn't forget to clean up the aircraft this time. We did an uneventful flapless landing, another normal circuit and then it was time to call it a night.

Back at the clubhouse we looked at the syllabus for Night VFR and realised that I cannot go solo before I have practiced unusual attitude recovery under the hood in daytime. I guess CASA does not like the idea of people practicing spiral dives and approaching the stall in a climbing turn at night.

So on the next Sunday we went out to the training area for practicing unusual attitude recovery. There's only two techniques to remember, depending on whether the nose is pointing up or down, so that wasn't too hard. Nose up, full power, push nose down, wings level. Nose down, power to idle, wings level, pull nose up. And in both cases finish by re-establishing straight and level flying at cruise power.

The good thing on that short 0.7 hour flight is that I spent 0.4 hour under the hood. I put the hood on as we passed 500 ft after take-off. Ben handled the radios and gave me vectors to the training area to perform unusual attitude recovery exercises and later back to Bankstown via Prospect and all the way to late downwind where I took the hood off before landing on 29R.

So I'm now officially ready to go solo at night. I'm just waiting for the planets to align between my availability, that of my instructor and that crap weather we've been having for the last three months. Even though it is obviously not the same as a first solo, this is still very exciting.